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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Flash Frontier WONDER contest and submission rush!
 
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Wallet
Jun 19, 2006

 Based on something else I was working on (hope that's kosher), but what the hell? 250 words is not a lot, it turns out.


Wallet posted:

A breath she stared them down. Too long. One step before another. Down. Her boot’s drum drew apart to ring hollow. Dark swallowed must and ash. Not long enough.

The brazier laid low to shear distended flickering clefts. The vestibule was patterned in blades: shoulders, hips; involute coils of scapula and ilium. Bishops and bishops and bishops.

She wove between the candles between the walls beneath the vertebra laid on end in baroque, imperfect tessellation. The lord’s base, the lady’s tip. The fit just so—nature’s mistake.

Find him with them. Sprawling cheek to cheek, pressed chamber to chamber, one and another and each a lone, feeble flame.

The first too large: merchant’s. Femur. Best cut off clean and cleaned for winter. Next and next. They lay stacked as wood in cords unpatterned, shrinking, unfit. Not yet his; toes, still. For borrowing.

Finger’s last procession dwindling. Dwindling until the pauper’s pinky piled high, split by stratum scarred in black. She searched in candle’s lone light. His but they weren’t; one and the next. Equivalent, distinct ambiguously, senseless but specific. He never minded company.

She found him as he’d been left: marked not carved, ashy black and reeking. She’d never have hadn’t she. This beauty was his now. Or him.

She lowered herself, hands to knees.

She should have come sooner.

Wallet fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Nov 21, 2022

* # ¿ Nov 17, 2022 16:29
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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:39
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Wallet
Jun 19, 2006

 Appreciate the crits; I already aggressively cut words, so with a 250 word limit I may have (did) go a bit overboard. The bones are literal; it's an ossuary.

My Shark Waifuu posted:

The Visitor

I like the melancholy of the wonderful becoming pedestrian and the joy of being jolted out of that. The last couple sentences leave me melancholy, again. The car metaphor pulled me out of it a little; we're firmly in the natural world, then it's a rusty motor and then we're back again.


Chernobyl Princess posted:

Childhood

This took me on a little journey: it captures a childlike wonder but the degree of introspection had me a little confused until it gets paid off. I feel like the reveal might be stronger without "Instead, you brought it to me."

When this story is being told got a little fuzzy for me. It's written in second person, but some of it uses language that doesn't seem directed at an age appropriate child, and describing it as a "bewildered smile" to the delighted child feels unkind. I might assume this was being told to the child when they were older except the last sentence refers to next week as if it hasn't yet occured.

* # ¿ Nov 21, 2022 16:54
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Flash Frontier WONDER contest and submission rush!